Imagine it was just a regular affiliated card that said you can play this however many times you like. And, importantly, he also says it allows them two more things: giving a leadership retroactively to a character and/or not fill up their physical stat card with it and make leaderships that can be considered stronger than those found on character cards (he immediately admits Steve 1 to have one of the strongest leaderships in the game though).
With that in mind let's look at the different TTC leaderships in the game (in alphabetical order):
We're not up to a good start here. The It Was YOU!!! Leadership has multiple problems in the way it works even before we look at the actual effect. Firstly it only works for affiliated characters. Something done only three times in the game for leaderships and pretty much going against the "mix and match" philosophy of the game. And secondly since the tokens are placed on the character, not on the leadership TTC, you loose your ability to even use the leadership when your leader is dazed. No other leadership in the game has that problem.
And now for the actual effect. Is it worth the trade off? No. Two additional defense dice don't even average to one additional defensive success. Sure when they do get you the needed blocks it will feel great and the aggressive move is really the strong part here but the Memory tokens are also a very limited resource.
Conclusion:
This card needs a rewrite and currently isn't worth a slot in your 5. Weapon X players have started to mostly ignore it.
Having played 10 games with Legion of the Lost I can absolutely say: the leadership is very unimpactful. The timing in the clean up phase makes it so, that you play round 1 without any leadership and dazed characters (yours and your opponents) can't be chosen for it. Extra power is nice but theres a bunch of other leaderships that can give that to you.
The first ever character bound TTC leadership if memory serves me right. And one of the other factionalized leaderships in only being able to be triggered by and affect affiliated Black Order models. The effect is pretty good however and the former is really it's biggest problem. And of course the (necessary) nerf to the Reality Gem has left Corvus Glaive as a rather under the curve 4/5 threat at the moment but that may change again in the future of course.
Conclusion:
For the added flexibility and the necessity to deny Thanos being able to be lead by his second in command on the table (that's a theme thing and AMG is very clear about theme being the most important thing for them) it is worth the slot. Splashes at least being able to trigger the leadership, when benefiting would maybe be too strong (which I honestly doubt) would be a nice change though.
Maybe the very definition of what we're talking about today, White Queen's Pawns is such a strong leadership it had to be nerfed, not in its function but in its original design that let you bring any model in the game. Shick said Emma being able to have a Hellfire Club leadership was play testers demand and that they learned a hard lesson in originally not giving it an affiliation list.
Hellfire Club is not considered a strong Affiliation at the moment, due to its list of affiliated characters mostly being the who is who of Mutants that could use an update (and Emma herself is confirmed to get one so there certainly is hope) and not having anything else than the leadership card that would make it worthwhile to play them. Shick clearly said though, that a HFC Affiliation wasn't in their original plans for the time Emma released and this at least gives the nod to it.
Conclusion:
It's absolutely well worth the card slot as one of the strongest leaderships in the game.
Medusa was supposed to have a second version that shows her as the leader of the Inhumans according to Shick but when it became clear that it wouldn't come to that and the new box came along they still wanted to give players the option to have her be a leader.
The leadership is pretty good. It absolutely does fill the criteria of: would it be a regular TTC you could use multiple times you would take it. It's main problem is Black Bolt 1s leadership not costing a card slot and being one of the best in the game. So the opportunity cost is mostly just too high. It becomes more interesting if you're not min maxing and want to try to run King BB, who is an excellent person to run under the Medusa leadership.
Conclusion:
Worth the slot, but heavily overshadowed by the free leadership of the faction.
Cry for Help is a very good leadership on a good character. New Mutants currently are mostly held back by a very short affiliation list of mostly squishy characters so splashing in big tanky stuff is usually the way to go. Cathal is playing Hulk every game and Reddit user shadowboy used Phoenix and went 3:1 at a recent tournament.
Conclusion:
It's worth the slot as it retroactively gave a character already in the game a leadership. Could it have been added to her updated card? Maybe. Might be a space issue.
The big one. The precedent we all quote when a leadership TTC costs a card slot. But Will Shick has said in multiple Interviews now that this is the only time it will be handled this way. It's part of the Affiliations identity and will remain unique to them. Having absolutely no downsides at all, like no fixed character to put it on and only a card slot in your 10 not your 5 with strong effects (Circle of the Cosmos being the choice most of the time) it's well worth the use. Shick also explained that both Loki and Scarlet Witch were on the affiliation list initially but had to be removed for Balance reasons. And that there is a chance they'll reevaluate it someday.
The other of the two "take whoever you want" TTC leaderships and probably the stronger of the two in my opinion, but the one with more bad match ups (Bleed immunity is pretty common).
The non leadership card leadership for Web Warriors that is factionalizing you and for a very good reason. This would quickly go out of hand if every character could use it. Its highs are already extremely high which is counterbalanced by having 0 reliability. And the agreement from most competitive players is that TTCs only get played if they have a guaranteed effect. So this wouldn't make the cut according to that logic, would it?
Conclusion:
It is good that it costs a slot and is faction locked. Otherwise it would be over the top (whether it is in its current form remains to be seen).
Final thoughts:
I like TTC leaderships that give a leadership to characters who don't have them on their card retroactively or in a way not fully represented in their current form. I usually don't like factionalizing leaderships unless they are on the power level of Web of the Spider-Verse.
Having card leaderships opens up extra design space but I still feel they are inherently disadvantaged by losing the card slot when most leaderships are just free.
That's it for today
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